A Guide For the Naïve Homosexualpage 30What Do We Gays Want?

What Do We Gays Want?

A gay who had been out a few years (and this is the typical attitude)
said, homosexuality is legal. What’s the big
fuss about? We are allowed to have out own clubs. We are allowed to do
anything sexually so long as we do it in private. Nobody loses his job
unless he is a damnfool who blabs to his fellow employees that he is
gay. I have too much to lose to march down Georgia street waving a pink
banner in some silly parade.

Today we laugh at the Negro slave who asked, why
you mad at Massa Charlie? He feeds us good. Tomorrow the
statement by that gay will seem just as shallow and short sighted.

What do we gays want then? First of all we want an end to laws that
discriminate against us. Even though sexual acts in private between
consenting adults were legalized in august 1969,
there are still a number of anti-homosexual laws on the books.

Note the in private. This means that if I
hold hands with Ben in a public place I can we arrested for gross
indecency.

Note the adult. If you or your partner
are not both adults (in B.C. This means 17 or over, but in other provinces
such as Ontario this means 21 or over) you can be charged with gross
indecency or indecent assault. True, these charges are almost never laid,
but the laws are still on the books. I feel the age of consent for boys
should be 16 — the same as for girls.

There is a law that states you may not work for the crown if you are a
homosexual. If you are gay you are not allowed to be a mailman; you are
not allowed to work in the civil service; and you are not allowed to hold
public office. This does not mean that there are no gays working for her
majesty — a full 10% of her work force is homosexual, but these
employees stand to lose their jobs if they are found out. At one time
homosexuals were security risks because they were so susceptible to
blackmail. But now blackmail is all but non-existent and so it is time
this law was removed from the books.

Though policemen very rarely directly hassle us, they are not exactly
eager to help us out should we get ourselves in trouble. One of
Vancouver’s must public gays was attacked in the White Lunch
Cafeteria. He went to the police station to lay assault charges. He told
them the assailant’s name and where he could be apprehended. The
police asked him for the assailant’s address. He told them that he
had no fixed address. The police then informed him that no charge could be
laid without an address.

When Frank Howes stole my typewriter, I told the police he would be
headed for the American border. They refused to ask the border authorities
to apprehend him.

What Can We Do For Gay Liberation?

Such examples show the public attitude that gays are second class
citizens. It is very hard to fight a public attitude, but you can fight
those institutions that shape the public attitude.

First of all we should push the church to remove the stigma of
homosexuality by performing marriages for two men or two women. We should
force the government to perform civil marriages for gays giving us the
same income tax and inheritance rights that straight couples have. We
should write angry letters every time a magazine or newspaper writes an
article that depicts us as flighty creatures resplendent in bell bottoms.
We should pressure the schools to remove the anti-gay propaganda films
from the curriculum and in its place teach true sex education dealing
honestly with the nature of our love, its beauty, its variations and its
desecrations. We must force the schools to recognize the gay heritage.
They must tell the students that Socrates, Michelangelo and Leonardo da
Vinci were gay. They must tell them that Oscar Wilde, W.H. Auden, Edward
Carpenter, E.M. Forster andré Gide, Marcel Proust, William
Shakespear, Alfred Tennyson, James Baldwin and Jean Cocteau have written
literature with gay themes. We must boycott any business that is known to
fire employees if they are found to be gay.

We must support the growing number of psychiatrists who now realize that
gays are not sick, against those old-line psychiatrists who support a
social norm where a hero is a man who kills other men in war and a
pervert is a man who loves another man. For too long we have been
committed to mental hospitals and prisons to be experimented on with
sex-drive reducing drugs. Too long have we been driven to suicide and
saddled with guilt obsessions.

People only hate and fear what they do not understand. Three years ago I
went to a movie in the old auditorium at
UBC (University of British Columbia).
Two lesbians sat in the seat in front of me. Part way through the show
they put their arms around each other and kissed. I got so upset I had to
run to the washroom where I threw up. But since that time I have come to
know many lesbians and to understand their feelings too and now the sight
of two girls kissing has just the opposite effect.